GottaCon 2011 – Friday Night Mega Battle

Over the weekend of February 4th to the 6th, GottaCon rocked out in Victoria.  Among the festivities, including PC LAN gaming, console gaming, RPGs, boardgames, Warhammer and 40k, Rida (aka: jack froide/frost, formerly of Connection Games) decided to put together a Steamroller event for us HordesMachiners.  The Steamroller was to run Saturday and Sunday, but there was gaming space and time on Friday!  In order to break the ice a Mega Battle was arranged.  The rules were pretty simple:

• 15+ point force for each player.
• You score points equal to the cost of a model you destroy/remove from play, etc.
• Warcasters are worth nothing.
• When your warcaster dies, all your remaining models are removed from the game and no one gets points for them.

We ended up with 8 players, so we got crammed all together on one large 8′ x 4′ table and randomly assigned positions and one of two sides.  No one was deployed on the short table edges.  There were some additional rules for this first big battle:

• You cannot target any model belonging to a player on the same table edge as you, but if you “accidentally” caused some casualties, you got the points.
• All players on the same table edge act simultaneously.
• In cases where attack / charge timing would come into question, the player with the closest model to the target would act first.

As my lists for the Steamroller event used Butcher and the Old Witch, I pulled out the following models:

• Kommander Strakhov (-6 pts)
• Torch 10 pts
• Decimator 9 pts
• Manhunter 2 pts

With Rida screaming at us that there is no thinking in HordesMachine (and other zen-like pronouncements), we all slapped our models down and got to it.  The whole thing turned into a giant awesome mess.  The far side of the table (my left to right) had legion (Thagrosh?), Menoth (Reznik), Legion (directly across from me) with eThagrosh and Menoth with the Harbinger.  On my side was (again my left to right) dwarven mercs (run by Ryan), Skorne (2x bronzebacks + Morghoul and paingivers), Khador (myself) and Retribution (Ravyn + MHSF and a Manticore, I believe).  As we were all activating at the same time, it was hard to keep track of what was going on.  The Thagrosh player and I basically ran screaming across the middle of the field and obliterated our armies against each other, leaving Strakhov running off behind Morghoul and Thagrosh hanging about mid-board blowing kisses at the oncoming Retribution Mage Hunter Strike Force.  The Retribution player never really moved fast enough to engage the Menoth player opposite him because he was afraid Harby would murder his single-wounders, allowing the Harbinger’s forces to flow into the void left by epic Thagrosh’s meat-brigade.  Morghoul managed to get way upfield to engage Reznik’s forces, but apparently whiffed with both bronzebacks a whole lot.  The Skorne were basically in the opposite deployment line when everything died.  Ryan and the Legion player across from him tied each other up in a heavy-metal slapfight until Reznik’s forces came in to clean up the dwarven stragglers.  The whole morass was wicked – not having a reason to go after casters was actually mind-bending, but it got worse in the one on ones.  I ended up having given up a whole lot of points, but I had also gotten a good boatload myself (19 I think), setting myself up for a good run in the one-v-one matchups.  Or so I thought.

After the mega battle (which took a surprisingly small amount of time), we split off into one on ones with our same lists.  My first game was against the Reznik force, composed (from memory and completely ignorant of Menoth tiers) of the following:

• Whatshisname Reznik (-6 pts)
• 2 x Reckoner (8 pts each)
• Vassal of Mentos Menoth (2 pts)
• Choir – max unit ??  (3 pts)

This is where the strangeness of not being able to go for casters became very apparent.  Reznik ran ahead (!) of his army.   The Menoth first turn was pretty standard run forward, as was mine.  After my first turn, Reznik loaded up Engine of Destructuion and flew in to kill my manhunter, getting 2 points. He was easily within my murder range (particularly considering Strakhov’s feat), but the jacks were protected from the Decimator’s Dozer gun by the Choir.  If I killed Rezzy right then and there, I got no points…  So I advanced and protected myself from the flame cannons with occultation on the Decimator – Torch and Strakhov being immune to fire meant the two Reckoners would not shoot them.  Reznik charged in and wrecked the Decimator, and the army stayed back…  Full focus on Torch and Strakhov’s feat later, and I …. hadn’t wrecked a jack because of stupid enliven moving his jack away from my Sustained Attack death-saw (of death!).  Damn. The flamethrower cooked the now exposed Vassal.  Torch then died to twin tetsubo-beatings by the Reckoners, leaving Strakhov alone against everything.  The only target I could reach worth points was the damaged jack, but Strakhov died to a free-strike by Reznik as he charged by.  2 points for the Vassal – though I’m pretty sure I wrote down 1 point, as I assumed that a solo as awesome as the Vassal would basically be free.

My second match was… ALSO AGAINST MENOTH!  Woo!  See if you can spot some similarities to the previous list here:

• Harbinger of Menoth (+5 pts)
• 2 x Reckoner (8 pts each)
• 2 x Vassals (2 pts each)

Two Vassals?  KHAN!  This match I was again snakebitten by Enliven, but there was now twice as much of it.  I would charge a rip-saw bearing Decimator or Torchie McFlameyPants in, then they would dance out of the reach of my sustained attacks.  And every time I killed a Vassal, Harby would martyr herself to save them.  My opponent even killed Harby with Martydom to stop me from getting a single point.  It was pretty hilarious, we were laughing the whole game.  I think he got the Decimator and the manhunter, but not Torch or Strakie.  At the end of the game I told my opponent that the Harbinger had convinced Strakhov to convert so he could at least get to kill something with fire.  The Kommander was sent off to break rocks with his head in the depths of my case.

The event on Friday night was a perfect way to break the ice and get everyone playing.  The atmosphere was friendly, and there was much head scratching and laughter about the inversion of the normal “gun for their caster at all costs” game play.  Thumbs up for a great ice breaker!  The overall winner of the introduction event was the Reznik player, whose name escapes me now (Brook?).  I believe he took home a box of Exemplar Cinerators, but I’m not sure which entity provided that specific prize, so I’ll plug the ones I know supported the Steamroller event:  Connection Games of Vancouver, Dice Bag Games of Duncan and GottaCon.

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